'SOS, what is this?': Woman's plea for help to identify mystery intruder in her house

A worried homeowner has taken to a Facebook group to ask for help identifying a curious-looking creature she found inside her NSW home.

“SOS – what is this? I am about 60 seconds away from burning the house down,” the woman wrote along with a photo of a strange-looking bug.

It didn’t take long for members of the group to start guessing what they thought the strange visitor may be.

“It looks like a spider with extra legs so it can run faster,” one person said.

“It looks like it belongs in the ocean! I’ve never seen an insect like that before,” another Facebook user wrote.

Most people were horrified at the photo and joked the woman should follow through with her plans to “burn the house down”.

“That is most definitely a nope!” one person responded.

“I hope it doesn’t have a big family,” another said.

A few people were able to identify the creature as a house centipede, but the homeowner wasn’t convinced that it should stay in her house.

“I think it needs to find a new place of residence,” she wrote.

One person suggested the woman welcome the visitor, informing her house centipedes came with a host of benefits.

“I used to kill them until I found out they eat other critters,” one woman wrote.

Experts at the Australian Museum confirmed the critter was indeed a house centipede and despite its frightening appearance, they are actually quite helpful in the home.

“Technically it’s not an insect – as it has too many legs,” Search and Discover manager David Bock told Yahoo News Australia.

House centipedes are “very common inside houses” and mostly found indoors in urban areas in Queensland, NSW, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia.

While Mr Bock assures us they are “harmless” to humans, they are a nightmare for other bugs in your house because “they will eat insects and spiders”.

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